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“Hey Grandma,” one of Spc. Ben Bryant’s recent letters from Afghanistan home to Greensboro begins. “Recovering from a 7 day mission. We have been all over looking for bad guys. Found a couple ...”

For the Army combat medic attached to the 1st Battalion’s 12th Infantry Regiment at Fort Ramrod, summer had turned hot in every sense. The 115-degree days were rainless, dusty, the men’s uniforms turning white from dried sweat.

Then, on Aug. 1, came the other kind of heat: In search of a Taliban bomb factory, the regiment lost three soldiers to a roadside bomb, including Pfc. Richard K. Jones of Roxboro.

“After that happened, they called us (medics) and the tankers in,” Bryant wrote. “The village bazaar is now very flat.”

Since Bryant’s last letter, things are changing in Afghanistan, but not for the better. Now begins the cold season, when temperatures plummet at night, winds whistle through mountain passes and blizzards blow in from Russia.

And although President Barack Obama last week approved an increase in troop levels, including 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, he described the situation as “deteriorating.”

For most Americans, the war is a vague, negative drumbeat in the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen. But for people like Bryant’s wife, Cherie Myers-Bryant, it’s local and personal.

She wants to help him, and there are things his unit needs: shampoo, deodorant and foot powder. They are always on the move, and the PX constantly runs out. Her plan is to pack 250 boxes and ship them in time for Thanksgiving.

“These guys are sleeping on rocks when they go out on missions and eating MREs,” Cherie Myers-Bryant said of her husband’s unit, which arrived in Afghanistan in late May for a one-year deployment.

“They just run out of stuff. Some guys don’t receive a lot of letters or packages at all.”

Although soldiers who previously deployed to Iraq call Afghanistan “just another sand pile,” it apparently comes with its own drawbacks.

The difficulty of the terrain means that on especially far-flung missions, mail delivery is sporadic, access to e-mail or webcams is limited and the PX stores are so remote that supplies quickly run out.

Bryant wrote earlier this month that they have had 150 trauma cases in three months, and that they are about to move to a post where the living conditions will be worse.

“Knowing that I get to come home to you,” he said in an e-mail to his wife earlier this month, “is what gives me strength and makes this bareable. Don’t think I spelled that right.”

In between waiting for loved ones’ letters from Afghanistan, which take several weeks to arrive, family members say it is difficult to listen to commentary about Americans’ so-called “war fatigue.”

“I was online the other day and the No. 2 story on Yahoo was on a dog rolling over. It was a puppy,” said Myers-Bryant. “I thought, 'Are you joking?’”

Given a concrete chance to help a soldier, however, Bryant’s mother Edie Bryant has been encouraged by the response from neighbors and friends of her son, who attended Grimsley and cooked at a string of restaurants before going to culinary school in New York.

“People say, 'What can I do to help?’” the mother said. “They don’t realize they can do something to show they care about soldiers, whether they agree with the political policy or not. I hope people are doing this all over the country.”

One person who has been sure to send out a package every week is Ruby Mantz in Fort Carson, Colo., home base of 44-112 Combat Medical Unit. There, Mantz says, it is easy to feel a sense of mission about the long war.

Then again, Mantz is a former Army medic. Her father is a sergeant-major and was in Iraq for a year, along with her brother, who is in the Special Forces and deployed twice. Meanwhile her husband, a father of five and also a combat medic, was in Iraq, and is now in Afghanistan, in the same unit as Bryant.

But even in a military town like Colorado Springs, Mantz feels as if the war is not a concern to civilians, unless they are directly affected.

“It’s very patriotic here on the post. But when you go off post, people have forgotten that we’re still at war,” she said. “Our lives have been changed a lot. Time has stopped for us, because he’s so far away. It’s surreal.”

To try to close the distance, she sends him pieces of what he is missing, everyday things that don’t seem to mean much if you see them every day. Spelling tests with 100s on them. Kids’ drawings. Mike and Ikes, his favorite candy.

And having been a medic, she always includes a can of foot powder. Because who knows how much further this army will have to march?

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn @news-record.com